Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
When it comes to the Second Amendment and guns, it seems that President Obama can’t make anyone happy. Ever since Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency, the NRA has screamed that Obama will be taking away the guns. This scare tactic continued when Obama defeated John McCain for the Presidency. Just what has Barack Obama done to make the NRA and gun owners frightened for their guns? The simple answer to this question is nothing. The head of the National Rifle Association, Mr. Wayne LaPierre actually admitted recently that Obama has done nothing to attack gun owner’s rights to bear arms, but claims Obama’s inaction against guns is actually a conspiracy to take away guns!! ‘ “[The Obama campaign] will say gun owners — they’ll say they left them alone,” LaPierre told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday. “In public, he’ll remind us that he’s put off calls from his party to renew the Clinton [assault weapons] ban, he hasn’t pushed for new gun control laws… The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he’s actually been good for the Second Amendment.” “But it’s a big fat stinking lie!” the NRA leader exclaimed. “It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” ‘ Raw Story
Now, before anyone thinks I am making this stuff up, the linked site includes a video clip wherein Mr. LaPierre verbalizes this alleged reverse conspiracy. Mr. LaPierre makes a point of throwing in the necessary names of alleged liberal co-conspirators to rev up his base. ‘ “Sotomayor, Kagan, Fast & Furious, the United Nations, executive orders. Those are the facts we face today… President Obama and his cohorts, yeah, they’re going to deny their conspiracy to fool gun owners. Some in the liberal media, they are already probably blogging about it. But we don’t care because the lying, conniving Obama crowd can kiss our Constitution!” ‘
The lying, conniving Obama crowd as Mr. LaPierre labels them has not done anything to harm the Second Amendment rights that the NRA claims to be at risk. I was interested in the last few words of LaPierre’s quotation above. The phrase “kiss our Constitution” appears to lay claim that the NRA and its followers own the Constitution and its protections. I could have sworn that my law school Constitutional professors taught me that the Constitution protects all citizens, but maybe I heard them wrong. But, I digress.
As the Raw Story article suggests, President Obama has actually taken heat from his own supporters over his alleged conspiracy to not take away the guns. NPR Does Mr. LaPierre provide any evidence of this bizarre claim? None that I could find. Maybe you will have better luck than me in finding evidence of presidential actions to hide President Obama’s intentions and/or actions of stealing legal guns from their owners.
I have to admit that if you read the comments section of the NPR article that details how the Left is disappointed with Obama’s inaction on gun control, you will read almost nothing except gun owners claiming that Obama’s words of inaction are actually code words that the End is Near and the Sky is Falling for gun owners! Just what will it take gun owners to ask Mr. LaPierre for evidence of his wild claims? I, for one would love to hear his answer to that question. I understand that candidate and President Obama may have stayed away from the 2nd Amendment issues for political reasons, but where is the evidence of this alleged conspiracy? I would think Fox News would be sending Bill O’Reilly’s reporters all over the country to uncover such a heinous conspiracy.
If Mr. Obama has not written any executive orders or supported additional legislative steps to control or take away guns since he has become President, just what is the basis for these wild claims? I realize that the NRA has a financial interest in getting gun owners scared into buying more guns, but are there other, underlying reasons why the gun owners are frightened so easily, when the facts do not support the NRA’s claims?
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
Additional sources: Gun Owners of America; NRA-ILA; Pajamas Media;